Month: October 2011

This is the pre-edited version of a piece which appeared in Nature Nanotechnology 4, 336-336 (June 2009). The published version can be viewed here (subscription required).

What does it mean to be a responsible nanoscientist? In 2008, we saw the European Commission recommend a code of conduct for responsible nanosciences and nanotechnologies research (PDF). This is one of a growing number of codes of conduct being proposed for nanotechnology. Unlike other codes, such as the UK-based Responsible Nanocode, which are focused more on business and commerce, the EU code is aimed squarely at the academic research enterprise. In attempting this, it raises some interesting questions about the degree to which individual scientists are answerable for consequences of their research, even if those consequences were ones which they did not, and possibly could not, foresee.

The general goals of the EU code are commendable – it aims to encourage dialogue between everybody involved in and affected by the research enterprise, from researchers in academia and industry, through to policy makers to NGOs and the general public, and it seeks to make sure that nanotechnology research leads to sustainable economic and social benefits. There’s an important question, though, about how the responsibility for achieving this desirable state of affairs is distributed between the different people and groups involved.

One can, for example, imagine many scientists who might be alarmed at the statement in the code that “researchers and research organisations should remain accountable for the social, environmental and human health impacts that their N&N research may impose on present and future generations.” Many scientists have come to subscribe to the idea of a division of moral labour – they do the basic research which in the absence of direct application, remains free of moral implications, and the technologists and industrialists take responsibility for the consequences of applying that science, whether those are positive or negative. One could argue that this division of labour has begun to blur, as the distinction between pure and applied science becomes harder to make. Some scientists themselves are happy to embrace this – after all, they are happy to take credit for the positive impact of past scientific advances, and to cite the potential big impacts that might hypothetically flow from their results.

Nonetheless, it is going to be difficult to convince many that the concept of accountability is fair or meaningful when applied to the downstream implications of scientific research, when those implications are likely to be very difficult to predict at an early stage. The scientists who make an original discovery may well not have a great deal of influence in the way it is commercialised. If there are adverse environmental or health impacts of some discovery of nanoscience, the primary responsibility must surely lie with those directly responsible for creating conditions in which people or ecosystems were exposed to the hazard, rather than the original discoverers. Perhaps it would be more helpful to think about the responsibilities of researchers in terms of a moral obligation to be reflective about possible consequences, to consider different viewpoints, and to warn about possible concerns.

A consideration of the potential consequences of one’s research is one possible approach to proceeding in an ethical way. The uncertainty that necessarily surrounds any predictions about way research may end up being applied at a future date, and the lack of agency and influence on those applications that researchers often feel, can limit the usefulness of this approach. Another code – the UK government’s Universal Ethical Code for Scientists – takes a different starting point, with one general principle – “ensure that your work is lawful and justified” – and one injunction to “minimise and justify any adverse effect your work may have on people, animals and the natural environment”.

A reference to what is lawful has the benefit of clarity, and it provides a connection through the traditional mechanisms of democratic accountability with some expression of the will of society at large. But the law is always likely to be slow to catch up with new possibilities suggested by new technology, and many would strongly disagree with the principle that what is legal is necessarily ethical. As far as the test of what is “justified” is concerned, one has to ask, who is to judge this?

One controversial research area that probably would past the test that research should be “lawful and justified” is in applications of nanotechnology to defence. Developing a new nanotechnology-based weapons system would clearly contravene the EU code’s injunction to researchers that they “should not harm or create a biological, physical or moral threat to people”. Researchers working in a government research organisation with this aim might find reassurance for any moral qualms with the thought that it was the job of the normal processes of democratic oversight to ensure that their work did pass the tests of lawfulness and justifiability. But this won’t satisfy those people who are sceptical about the ability of institutions – whether they in government or in the private sector – to manage the inevitably uncertain consequences of new technology.

The question we return to, then, is how is responsibility divided between the individuals that do science, and the organisations, institutions and social structures in which science is done? There’s a danger that codes of ethics focus too much on the individual scientist, at a time when many scientists often feel rather powerless, with research priorities increasingly being set from outside, and with the development and application of their research out of their hands. In this environment, too much emphasis on individual accountability could prove alienating, and could divert us from efforts to make the institutions in which science and technology are developed more responsible. Scientists shouldn’t completely underestimate their importance and influence collectively, even if individually they feel rather impotent. Part of the responsibility of a scientist should be to reflect on how one would justify one’s work, and how people with different points of view might react to it, and such scientists will be in a good position to have a positive influence on those institutions they interact with – funding agencies, for example. But we still need to think more generally how to make responsible institutions for developing science and technology, as well as responsible nanoscientists.

Why isn’t the UK more successful at converting its excellent science into wealth creating businesses? This is a perennial question – and one that’s driven all sorts of initiatives to get universities to handle their intellectual property better, to develop closer partnerships with the private sector and to create more spinout companies. Perhaps UK universities shied away from such activities thirty years ago, but that’s not the case now. In my own university, Sheffield, we have some very successful and high profile activities in partnership with companies, such as our Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing, shortly to be expanded as part of an Advanced Manufacturing Institute with heavy involvement from Rolls Royce and other companies. Like many universities, we have some interesting spinouts of our own. And yet, while the UK produces many small high tech companies, we just don’t seem to be able to grow those companies to a scale where they’d make a serious difference to jobs and economic growth. To take just one example, the Royal Society’s Scientific Century report highlighted Plastic Logic, a company based on great research from Richard Friend and Henning Sirringhaus from Cambridge University making flexible displays for applications like e-book readers. It’s a great success story for Cambridge, but the picture for the UK economy is less positive. The company’s Head Office is in California, its first factory was in Leipzig and its major manufacturing facility will be in Russia – the latter fact not unrelated to the fact that the Russian agency Rusnano invested $150 million in the company earlier this year.

This seems to reflect a general problem – why aren’t UK based investors more willing to put money into small technology based companies to allow them to grow? Again, this is something people have talked about for a long time, and there’ve been a number of more or less (usually less) successful government interventions to address the issue. Only the latest of these was announced at the Conservative party conference speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne – “credit easing” to “help solve that age old problem in Britain: not enough long term investment in small business and enterprise.”

But it’s not as if there isn’t any money in the UK to be invested – so the question to ask isn’t why money isn’t invested in high tech businesses, it is why money is invested in other places instead. The answer must be simple – because those other opportunities offer higher returns, at lower risk, on shorter timescales. The problem is that many of these opportunities don’t support productive entrepreneurship, which brings new products and services to people who need them and generates new jobs. Instead, to use a distinction introduced by economist William Baumol (see, for example, his article Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive, PDF), they support unproductive entrepreneurship, which exploits suboptimal reward structures in an economy to make profits without generating real value. Examples of this kind of activity might include restructuring companies to maximise tax evasion, speculating in financial and property markets when the downside risk is shouldered by the government, exploiting privatisations and public/private partnerships that have been structured to the disadvantage of the tax-payer, and generating capital gains which result from changes in planning and tax law.

Most criticism of this kind of bad capitalism focuses on issues of fairness and equity, and on the damage to the democratic process done by the associated lobbying and influence-peddling. But it causes deeper problems than this – money and effort used to support unproductive entrepreneurship is unavailable to support genuine innovation, to create new products and services that people and society want and need. In short, bad capitalism crowds out good capitalism, and innovation suffers.